Personal Development

Can we just be honest with each other for a minute?

Things are hard right now. Not “inconvenient” hard. Not “first world problem” hard. I mean the kind of hard where you stand in the grocery store aisle doing math in your head, putting things back, and trying not to let the people behind you see your hands shake a little. The kind of hard where you check your bank account before you fall asleep and again the second you wake up, like checking on a wound to see if it’s still bleeding.

If that’s you today, I want you to know something before we go one word further: you are not weak, you are not failing, and you are not alone.

Why This Season Feels Different

It’s not just in your head. Prices on nearly everything — groceries, gas, insurance, rent — have climbed faster than most of our paychecks have. When the cost of staying alive keeps moving the target, your nervous system doesn’t know that. It just knows: threat, threat, threat. That’s why so many of us are walking around with a low hum of anxiety we can’t quite name. Our bodies are responding to a real and constant pressure, not an imagined one.

So if you’ve been more irritable, more tired, more prone to tears over something small — that’s not a character flaw. That’s a body doing exactly what bodies do under sustained stress.

What This Kind of Anxiety Actually Feels Like

Maybe for you it looks like:

• Lying awake running numbers that never quite add up
• Feeling a flash of shame every time you have to say “we can’t afford that” to your kids or grandkids
• Avoiding your mail or your banking app because you’re scared of what you’ll see
• Snapping at the people you love over nothing, because the something is too big to say out loud
• A tight chest walking into the store, wondering what’s gone up since last time

I’ve sat in every single one of those places. And friend, I’m not writing to you from some mountaintop where I’ve got it all figured out. I’m writing to you from the same valley, just a few steps further down the trail, waving a flashlight back at you.

Okay, So What Do We Do With It?

Here’s what’s helped me — not to make the prices go down, because I can’t do that, but to keep my head and my heart above water while they stay up.

1. Name it instead of numbing it

Anxiety left unnamed just grows in the dark. Say it out loud, even if it’s just to yourself in the car: “I’m scared about money right now.” Naming it doesn’t make it bigger. It actually starts to shrink it, because you stop spending energy pretending you’re fine.

2. Shrink the problem to today

You cannot solve next year’s prices today. You can only handle today’s. When the spiral starts, I ask myself one question: What is actually in front of me right now? Usually it’s just one bill, one meal, one decision — not the whole mountain.

3. Build a “control column”

Grab a notebook and draw a line down the middle. On one side, write what you can’t control — the price of eggs, gas, your landlord’s decisions. On the other, write what you can — what you cook this week, whether you call about a payment plan, whether you cancel one subscription. Anxiety loves to live in the “can’t control” column. Your peace lives in the other one.

4. Let your faith be a place to put the weight down, not a performance

This isn’t about pretending you feel peaceful when you don’t. It’s about handing the parts you can’t carry to Someone who can. “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). That’s not a bumper sticker verse to me anymore — it’s become a daily, sometimes hourly, practice of literally saying, “God, I can’t hold this one. You take it.”

5. Talk to someone — for real

Not just venting on social media into the void. An actual person. A friend who won’t try to fix it, just witness it. If the anxiety is bigger than conversation can hold, a counselor or your doctor is not a last resort — it’s wisdom.

6. Protect one small joy a day

When money is tight, joy starts to feel like a luxury you can’t afford. Fight that lie. A walk outside, a cup of coffee made slow, five minutes of a song that makes you feel something good — these cost nothing and they remind your body it’s allowed to feel something besides fear.

You’re Not Behind. You’re Surviving Something Real.

If you take nothing else from this, take this: struggling to keep up in an economy that keeps moving the goalposts is not evidence that you’re doing life wrong. It’s evidence that you’re living in a genuinely hard season, and you’re still here, still trying, still showing up for the people who need you.

That’s not failure. That’s faithfulness.

We’re going to keep figuring this out together, one grocery trip, one hard conversation, one deep breath at a time.

With so much love,
Momma J 🤍